Magnetic disk drives are conventionally designed to store large volumes of data on a plurality of disks mounted on a spindle assembly. Typically, each disk includes two disk surfaces capable of storing data. On each disk surface, user data is divided into groups of sectors and stored in concentric circular tracks located between an outside diameter and an inside diameter of the disk. Embedded servo information is recorded in servo sectors located in radially continuous narrow wedges along the disk surface. Conventionally, a single microprocessor is included in the disk drive to control certain disk drive operations.
Recently, however, some disk drives have begun to incorporate multiple microprocessors in order to improve performance while lowering memory requirements, die size requirements and power consumption. In one typical implementation, a disk drive may include two microprocessors (e.g., a servo processor and a host processor), each dedicated to executing different disk drive tasks. Since each microprocessor has fewer disk drive tasks to perform, they may each be slower and less powerful than a single microprocessor would need to be for the same disk drive. Unfortunately, although the multiple microprocessors may be designed to meet the requirements of the disk drive under normal operating conditions, they may, in some implementations, lack sufficient bandwidth to timely process relatively infrequent events (e.g., to timely process and respond to changing environmental conditions).
There is therefore a need in the art for enabling multiple microprocessors to timely respond to environmental conditions.